Watkins still reeling from NFL draft

Hours after his name had been called at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on Thursday night, Danny Watkins found himself thinking about his improbable journey to the NFL draft.

“Last night was definitely a reality check,” said the offensive lineman from Kelowna, B.C., who was picked 23rd overall by the Philadelphia Eagles. “I was laying in bed last night kind of looking back at it all and I’m really glad I made the decisions that I did.”

When Watkins was 16, he visited a fire station in the hopes of earning a credit at school. He had no specific interest in firefighting, but it seemed like a good way to get out of math class. The visit changed his life.

“I’ll never forget the first day going there, [meeting] a great bunch of guys, and I remember I came home that night and told the folks, ‘I want to be a fireman.’ I started with a junior program for a year and it kind of just took off after that.”

Watkins enrolled in a fire sciences course at Butte College in northern California in 2007, which is when, at the age of 22, he started playing football. The game came naturally to the 6-foot-3, 310-pound Watkins and after two years at Butte he earned a scholarship at Baylor University.

On Thursday, he became the fourth Canadian to be selected in the opening round of the NFL draft.

Watkins invited five of his friends from West Kelowna Fire Rescue to join him in New York. The morning of the draft the group went to visit a firehouse, which had lost a number of members during the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The whole day started out amazing,” said Lionel Bateman, a captain at the West Kelowna Fire Rescue hall.

“It’s Danny’s draft day and he wakes up in the morning and the first thing he’s talking about isn’t getting drafted, it’s about going to the station.”

After meeting some of the New York firefighters, Watkins was determined to invite them to the draft as well.

“Danny talked to his agent and told him we had to get tickets for those guys and he got them,” Bateman said.

“We go to the station and those guys welcomed us into their house like we’re family, and that’s really what the fire department is. We spent about three hours with those guys, had lunch with them and Danny loved it. They took him for a run in their ladder truck. It was awesome.”

As the first hour of the draft passed, Watkins exchanged some nervous text messages with his buddies.

“To be honest with you, I think Danny was more worried about us sitting there waiting for him rather than when he would be drafted,” Bateman said.

When it became apparent the Eagles were about to pick Watkins, the group of firefighters rushed forward and cheered.

“It was totally spontaneous,” Bateman said. “The balcony railing is only two feet high where we were and we thought we may fall off. Some of the New York firefighters were grabbing our belt loops so we didn’t fall over.”

The group then made their way down to see Watkins.

“He came running to us and all the security guys were trying to keep him back because they didn’t want him crossing a certain line, but there was no stopping him,” Bateman said. “He came up and picked me up off the ground.”

The moment would have never happened had Watkins stuck by his initial decision not to attend the draft.

“My draft party was going to consist of sitting around, hanging out with the family in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and now I’m sitting here today,” Watkins told reporters during a news conference in Philadelphia on Friday.

“I kind of feel like Tom Cruise a little bit. I’m definitely not used to this.”

Watkins decided to attend the draft because it offered him an opportunity to visit a fire station in New York. It was a chance for him to come full circle.

“I grew up at a fire station and there was an opportunity to go to a FDNY fire house and that was definitely really appealing,” he said.

“Today we had the opportunity to go meet some members of the Philadelphia Fire Department, and it was exactly the same as New York. They embrace you with open arms and it was like you knew the guys 10, 20 years. No matter where you go you’re going to be a brother fireman somewhere.”